From Humiliation to Compensation? Experiencing Poverty and Welfare Institutions Among Red Widows from the Civil War, 1918–1945

After the Great War, various pension schemes were created in Europe to assist war widows and orphans. Compared with the general European response, the Finnish Civil War of 1918 resulted in two different groups of widows and orphans and divergent practices of aid. The families of the White Army soldiers were assisted by national pensions. The widows and orphans of the Reds were stigmatized as the rebellious, defeated side of the war. The chapter focuses on the Red Widows’ encounters with the Finnish social welfare institution in 1918–1945 to answer the following questions: How did these widows interpret the measures the social welfare system directed to them? What kind of experiences of society did these measures create? How did the two-way social relationship affect the dense community of these widows? The analysis uses the concepts of emotional community and collective experience. The source material consists of the letters of complaint the widows wrote to the Ministry of Social Affairs from 1919 until the middle of the 1940s. The article proceeds via the concepts of humiliation, resistance, compensation, and wounded confidence. The letters describe the process of the experience in the life course of the Red widows, and the concepts serve as tools in the analysis.